ORIGINAL RESEARCH

published: 20 October 2017

doi: 10.3389/fenvs.2017.00067

Subseasonal Predictability of Boreal

Summer Monsoon Rainfall from
Ensemble Forecasts
Nicolas Vigaud 1*, Andrew W. Robertson 1 , Michael K. Tippett 2, 3 and Nachiketa Acharya 1
1
International Research Institute for Climate and Society, Earth Institute at Columbia University, New York, NY, United States,
2
Department of Applied Physics and Applied Mathematics, Columbia University, New York, NY, United States, 3 Department
of Meteorology, Center of Excellence for Climate Change Research, King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia

Subseasonal forecast skill over the broadly defined North American (NAM), West African
(WAM) and Asian (AM) summer monsoon regions is investigated using three Ensemble
Prediction Systems (EPS) at sub-monthly lead times. Extended Logistic Regression
(ELR) is used to produce probabilistic forecasts of weekly and week 3–4 averages
of precipitation with starts in May–Aug, over the 1999–2010 period. The ELR tercile
category probabilities for each model gridpoint are then averaged together with equal
weight. The resulting Multi-Model Ensemble (MME) forecasts exhibit good reliability, but
Edited by: have generally low sharpness for forecasts beyond 1 week; Multi-model ensembling
Raquel Nieto, largely removes negative values of the Ranked Probability Skill Score (RPSS) seen in
University of Vigo, Spain
individual forecasts, and broadly improves the skill obtained in any of the three individual
Reviewed by:
models except for the AM. The MME week 3–4 forecasts have generally higher RPSS
Rodrigo J. Bombardi,
George Mason University, and comparable reliability over all monsoon regions, compared to week 3 or week 4
United States forecast separately. Skill is higher during La Niña compared to El Niño and ENSO-neutral
Ana María Durán-Quesada,
University of Costa Rica, Costa Rica conditions over the 1999–2010 period, especially for the NAM. Regionally averaged
Lin Wang, RPSS is significantly correlated with the Maden-Julian Oscillation (MJO) for the AM and
Institute of Atmospheric Physics
WAM. Our results indicate potential for skillful predictions at subseasonal time-scales
(CAS), China
over the three summer monsoon regions of the Northern Hemisphere.
*Correspondence:
Nicolas Vigaud Keywords: subseasonal to seasonal forecasting, forecast calibration, multi-model ensembling, Madden Julian
nicolas.vigaud@gmail.com oscillation, El Nino-Southern oscillation, North American monsoon, West African monsoon, Asian monsoon

Specialty section:
This article was submitted to 1. INTRODUCTION
Atmospheric Science,
a section of the journal
Monsoon systems of the Northern Hemisphere including the North American (NAM), West
Frontiers in Environmental Science
African (WAM) and Asian (AM) summer monsoons, are all characterized by marked seasonality
Received: 06 June 2017 and strong variability on seasonal, annual and decadal time-scales (Adams and Comrie, 1997; Lebel
Accepted: 04 October 2017
et al., 2000; Krishnamurthy and Kinter, 2003). These variations have significant and sometimes
Published: 20 October 2017
devastating societal impacts in regions where populations depend mainly on rain-fed agriculture
Citation: and are already extremely vulnerable (Gadgil and Rao, 2000; Sultan et al., 2005; Ingram and
Vigaud N, Robertson AW, Tippett MK
Hunt, 2015). Climate forecast information beyond the seasonal cycle could thus be valuable as
and Acharya N (2017) Subseasonal
Predictability of Boreal Summer
it is well suited for disaster risk and preparedness actions (World Meteorological Organization,
Monsoon Rainfall from Ensemble 2013). Predictions between medium-range weather (up to 2 weeks) and seasonal climate (from 3
Forecasts. Front. Environ. Sci. 5:67. to 6 months) forecasts have recently received increasing interest due to a better understanding of
doi: 10.3389/fenvs.2017.00067 climate phenomena on subseasonal time-scales, particularly the Madden-Julian Oscillation or MJO

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Vigaud et al.
(Zhang, 2013) and modeling advances (Vitart, 2014). Sources of
predictability at subseasonal time-scales include the inertia of
sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies and the MJO (Waliser
et al., 2003; Waliser, 2011; Neena et al., 2014), stratospheric
processes (Baldwin and Dunkerton, 2001; Scaife and Knight,
2008) and memory in soil moisture (Koster et al., 2010), snow
cover (Lin and Wu, 2011) and sea ice (Holland et al., 2011).
The skill of a particular forecast will depend on how active these
phenomena are during the forecast period and how strongly
they impact the region considered. Over monsoon regions,
the influence of El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), the
MJO and land-surface processes are particularly pronounced
rising the question to which extent useful S2S forecasting is
achievable.
Significant correlations between monsoonal rainfall and
Niño3.4 suggest that ENSO causes global tropical monsoon
rainfall variability and may in turn give rise to skillful predictions
at subseasonal time-scales but these relationships have been non-
stationary for most monsoon regions over the past 50 years (Yim
et al., 2014). Earlier studies did not suggest strong relationships
between the NAM and ENSO (Namias, 1991; Adams and Comrie,
1997), however the continental-scale anomalous anticyclone
prevailing in summer over North America during La Niña
and contrasting with weaker impacts during El Niño (Wang
et al., 2007) might be of relevance to the NAM. Over West
Africa, Sahelian rainfall relationships to ENSO have only been
evidenced since the 1990s (Semazzi et al., 1988; Rowell et al.,
1992; Janicot et al., 1996), El Niño (La Niña) being associated
with dry (wet) conditions over the Sahel. More recently Joly and
Voldoire (2009) identified one robust feature, through which the
WAM is influenced during the developing phase of ENSO or the
decay of some long-lasting La Niña, consisting of modulations
of the Walker circulation and a Kelvin wave response in the
high troposphere. For the AM, severe droughts in India have
almost always been accompanied by El Niño events, however
not all El Niño events have produced severe droughts (Gadgil
et al., 2005). While El Niño warming generates anomalous
precipitation and hence ascent in the central-to-east Pacific, it
concomitantly leads to anomalous subsidence over the Indian
Ocean region acting to suppress convection. Krishna Kumar
et al. (2006) found that events with the warmest sea surface
temperature anomalies in the central equatorial Pacific are more
effectively leading to drought-producing subsidence over India
than events with the warmest signature in the eastern equatorial
Pacific.
The MJO is often cited as the main source of subseasonal
predictability. NAM precipitation is influenced by the MJO
particularly over southern Mexico (Higgins and Shi, 2001), but
Lorenz and Hartmann (2006) also found that associated westerly
wind anomalies in the eastern tropical Pacific lead, from several
days to over a week later, to above-normal rainfall in the monsoon
regions of Arizona, New Mexico and northwest Mexico. These
changes occur through modulations in the strength of low-
level easterly waves off the coast of Mexico, which in turn
trigger the development of moisture surges from the Gulf
of California and could indicate potentials for predictability.
During the monsoon season, convection over West Africa is
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Subseasonal Predictability of Summer Monsoon Rainfall
modulated by the propagation of low frequency waves within the
MJO and Rossby peaks (Janicot et al., 2009; Pohl et al., 2009;
Mohino et al., 2012; Niang et al., 2016). The good skill of some
models from the Atmospheric Model Intercomparison Project
(AMIP) in capturing the main characteristics of the summer
MJO and its influence on convection and rainfall over West
Africa suggests that it may be possible to predict anomalous
convection locally with a time lead of 15–20 days (Niang et al.,
2016). Intraseasonal fluctuations of the AM are not periodic
but are manifested as two dominant bands in the spectra of
rainfall, OLR and circulation data on time scales of 10–20 days
and 30–60 days (Krishnamurthy and Kinter, 2003). Evidence
for an eastward propagation of convection associated with the
northward propagation of the monsoon trough in the 30–
60 day time-scale, suggests that the MJO exerts an influence
on the active and break cycles of monsoon rainfall (Yasunari,
1979; Lau and Chan, 1986; Singh et al., 1992; Annamalai and
Slingo, 2001), which could translate into potential subseasonal
predictability. Moreover, Jie et al. (2017) have recently identified
potentials for skillful predictions up to 30 days for strong
events of the Boreal Summer Intraseasonal Oscillation (BSISO)
considered as a specific mode of the tropical Intraseasonal
Oscillation (ISO) that prevails in boreal summer (Wang and Xie,
1997).
Based on experience from probabilistic seasonal climate and
medium-range forecasting, calibration of model probabilities is
needed to account for model deficiencies and produce reliable
forecasts (Goddard et al., 2001; Wilks, 2002; Tippett et al.,
2007). By contrast to seasonal timescales, submonthly hindcasts
(reforecasts) are often characterized by their shorter length and
fewer ensemble members which represent additional challenges.
While the value of the model output statistics (MOS) approach to
improve weather probabilistic forecasts has been demonstrated
(Hamill et al., 2004), little analysis has been yet done at
subseasonal time-scales (DelSole et al., 2017; Vigaud et al., 2017).
There is also a need to investigate if skill can be enhanced by
multi-model ensemble techniques, as has been demonstrated for
seasonal (Robertson et al., 2004) and medium range (Hamill
and Whitaker, 2006) forecasting. Extended Logistic Regression
(ELR) includes the quantile threshold along with the ensemble
mean as predictor and produces mutually consistent quantile
probabilities that sum to one property (Wilks and Hamill, 2007;
Wilks, 2009). This study produces weekly and week 3–4 Multi-
Model Ensemble (MME) precipitation terciles probabilities
forecasts from three individual EPS reforecasts over summer
monsoon regions of the Northern Hemisphere, using ELR
applied at each gridpoint to the individual model forecasts
which are subsequently averaged together with equal weighting.
The paper is outlined as follows. The data and method are
presented in section 2 together with diagnostics relative to the
ELR model setup when applied to weekly-varying precipitation
tercile averages. The skill of starts during the May–Aug seasons
are examined for the NAM, WAM and AM separately in
section 3, first at weekly resolution. Attempts at improving
skill through week 3–4 averages are then discussed alongside
their skill relationships to ENSO and the MJO. Conclusions are
summarized in section 4.
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Vigaud et al.
TABLE 1 | ECMWF, NCEP, and CMA forecasts attributes as archived in the
Subseasonal-to-seasonal (S2S) database at ECMWF.
Attributes ECMF CFS CMA
Time range d0-46 d0-44 d0-60
Resolution Tco639/319 L91 T126L64 T106L40
Ens. size 51 16 4 regression can be extended to produce the probability p of the
Freq. 2/week Daily Daily
Re-forecasts (RFC) On the fly Fix Fix
RFC length Past 20 years 1999–2010 1994–2014
RFC freq. 2/week Daily Daily
RFC size 11 4 4
2. DATA AND METHODS
2.1. Observation and Model Datasets
Daily precipitation fields from the European Centre for
Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), National Centers
for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) CFSv2 and the China
Meteorological Administration (CMA) subseasonal forecasts for
week 1, week 2, week 3, and week 4 of the reforecasts (i.e., the
periods from [d+1;d+7] to [d+22;d+28] for a forecast issued on
day d) were obtained from the Subseasonal-to-Seasonal (S2S)
database (Vitart et al., 2017) through the IRI Data Library
(IRIDL) portal. These EPS have different native resolutions (from
125 km at the Equator with 40 vertical levels for CMA to 16/32
km and 91 vertical levels for ECMWF) and are archived on a
common 1.5◦ grid in the S2S database. The ensemble members
(51 for ECMWF, 4 for NCEP and CMA) and reforecasts length
(between 44 and 60 days lead from the NCEP CFSv2 to CMA)
depend on the modeling center as indicated in Table 1; see Vitart
et al. (2017) for further details. In particular, ECMWF is the only
model for which reforecasts are generated on the fly twice a week
(11 members every Monday and Thursday), while those from
NCEP and CMA are generated 4-times daily from fixed model
versions. We thus consider in the following weekly cumulated
precipitation based on ECMWF reforecasts that are generated
for Monday starts from May to Aug 2015, on which NCEP
and CMA 4 members daily reforecasts have been sampled from
their respective 1999–2010 and 1994–2014 periods of issuance.
There are 240 reforecasts (20 starts per season over 12 years)
for each model used in this study. The common period when all
three EPS reforecasts are available is 1999–2010, and that is the
period used in our analysis. Subsequently, S2S data were spatially
interpolated onto the GPCP 1-degree horizontal grid before the
ELR forecast probabilities obtained from the three individual
models are averaged to form MME tercile precipitation forecasts
from which the skill of starts in May-Aug is assessed over the
three continental summer monsoon regions.
To produce comparable sets of forecasts, the Global
Precipitation Climatology Project (GPCP) version 1.2 (Huffman
et al., 2001; Huffman and Bolvin, 2012) daily rainfall estimates
on a 1-degree grid, available from 1996 to October 2015, are used
as observational data for the calibration and verification of the
reforecasts over the 1999–2010 period of analysis for all three
regions.
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Subseasonal Predictability of Summer Monsoon Rainfall
2.2. Extended Logistic Regression model
Distributional regressions are well suited to probability
forecasting, i.e., when the predictand is a probability of
exceedance rather than a measurable physical quantity, allowing
the conditional distribution of a response variable to be derived
given a set of explanatory predictors. In this context, logistic
verifying observation V not exceeding the quantile q,

p = Probability V ≤ q
by including an additional explanatory variable g(q) which is a
function of the quantile q as follows:
" #
p
ln = f (xens ) + g(q) (1)
1−p
where f and g are here linear functions of the EPS ensemble mean
xens and quantile q respectively. This definition of ELR leads to
mutually consistent individual threshold probabilities (Wilks and
Hamill, 2007; Wilks, 2009); see section 2.3. Ultimately, these allow
flexible choice of threshold probabilities according to users need
(Barnston and Tippett, 2014). Here, ELR is computed for q equal
to the 33rd and 67th percentiles of the precipitation distribution
to produce tercile category probabilities that are referred as ELR
forecasts in the rest of this study.
The observed climatological tercile categories corresponding
to the 33rd and 67th percentile from GPCP weekly cumulated
precipitation estimates are defined separately at each gridpoint
for each start within the May-Aug (May 4th to Aug 24th Mondays
start dates) season (i.e., 12 starts) and each lead (week 1–4)
following a leave-one year-out approach. Next, (1) the ELR
parameters are estimated separately for each model, gridpoint,
calendar start date and lead using all years except the one
being forecast, (2) forecasted terciles probabilities are cross-
validated for the remaining year (validation set), i.e., leave-one
year-out methodology, (3) Multi-Model Ensembles (MME) are
constructed by simple averaging of the three individual forecast
probabilities (MME forecasts in the following).
2.3. ELR Model Setup
For forecasts of weekly averages, the climatological observed
tercile categories are computed over 3-week windows formed
by the forecast target week and a week on either side. The year
being forecast is left out of the climatology calculation which uses
the 33 weeks from the remaining 11 years. Wider windows did
not improve the skill of the cross-validated forecasts contrasting
with the findings of Wilks (2009). A “dry mask” is used and
ELR forecasts are only produced when and where the 33rd
percentile is non-zero, since otherwise the lower tercile boundary
is not well-defined. The MME is obtained by averaging individual
forecasts with equal weighting.
In additon, we also considered forecasts for the week 3–4
target period (from d+15 to d+28 for forecasts issued on day
d). This corresponds to a 2-week target at 2-week lead (Zhu
et al., 2014). The tercile categories were derived using a 6-week
window, including the 2-week target formed by week 3 and
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Vigaud et al.
4 leads and two weeks on either side; wider windows did not
improve forecast skill.
Figure 1 shows an example of the regressions computed from
ECMWF reforecasts for Aug 3–9 2000, fitted using a 3-week
window centered on the Aug 3rd week at the gridpoint at
[13.5◦ N;91.5◦ W] just off the Guatemala Pacific coast where there
is some skill in summer. Regressions are based on observed
terciles of GPCP observation over this 3-week window (Jul 27th
to Aug 16th). Forecasted probabilities of non-exceedance of the
0.33 and 0.67 quantiles obtained from Equation (1) for different
values of the ensemble mean weekly accumulated precipitation
forecasts (x axis) are characterized by parallel lines for different
leads (week 1–4) in agreement with the ELR formulated as
per Equation (1) yielding logically consistent sets of forecasts,
i.e., cumulative probabilities for smaller predictand thresholds
cannot exceed those for larger thresholds (Wilks, 2009). The
nonzero slope of the lines is an indication of forecast skill. As
the lead time increases, the regression have slopes that are closer
to zero and their departures from the climatological probabilities
decrease. Once weekly terciles are defined under cross-validation,
the ELR model is then trained out-of-sample on the same pool of
weeks (i.e., 3-week windows centered on the target week, over 11
years) by fitting forecasts equations at each point, lead and start
separately for each S2S model. Regression coefficients obtained
then allow to produce forecasted weekly precipitation terciles
probabilities. Finally the different forecasted terciles probabilities
from the three models are averaged (i.e., with equal weights) to
produce MME forecasts.
2.4. Skill Metrics
The skill of tercile category precipitation forecasts obtained from
the above ELR model are evaluated using two standard metrics
for probabilistic forecasts. First, reliability diagrams are plotted
to evaluate their reliability, resolution and sharpness (Wilks,
1995; Hamill, 1997), computed by pooling all land points over
the broader North American, West African and Asian summer
monsoon domains (see Figures 5–7, respectively). These broad
geographical windows encompass regions with different rainfall
regimes, some of which might be only adjacent to the core
monsoons, such as the semi-arid southwest United States for
instance. Ranked Probability Skill Scores (RPSS; Epstein, 1969;
Murphy, 1969, 1971; Weigel et al., 2007) maps complement
the above diagnostics with spatial information and quantify the
extent to which the ELR-calibrated predictions are improved
compared to climatological frequencies.
2.5. Significance Testing
In section 3.3, RPSS is averaged for starts during specific phases
of ENSO and the MJO, and are tested for statistical significance
using Monte Carlo simulations based on many random forecasts
subsets (i.e., 100,000) drawn from the entire pool of forecasts
with starts during the May–Aug period, from which the 90th
percentile RPSS is compared to these from ENSO/MJO phase
samples. Monte Carlo simulations are also used to assess the
significance of the correlations of area averages and principal
components of week 3–4 MME RPSS with the observed Niño3.4
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Subseasonal Predictability of Summer Monsoon Rainfall
index and RMM1 and RMM2 MJO indices from Wheeler and
Hendon (2004), as well as their best linear combination.
3. RESULTS
3.1. Weekly Averages
Reliability diagrams for weekly ECMWF precipitation tercile
category forecasts from all weekly starts during the May-Aug
season and each land gridpoints from the NAM domain in
Figure 5, are displayed in Figures 2A,B for the below- and
above-normal categories respectively. These exhibit reasonable
skill for week 1 in terms of reliability and resolution, as shown
by blue curves close to the diagonal and distant from the
climatological 0.33 horizontal line (zero resolution line, not
plotted) respectively. The corresponding histograms for week
1 ECMWF forecasted categories are spread across all bins
characterizing high sharpness. Relatively few forecasts favor
the above-normal category, and they show a tendency toward
over-confidence when they are strong. As lead time increases,
the sharpness decreases and maximum frequencies become
concentrated around climatology (0.33, i.e., fourth bin). This
is concomitant with decreasing slopes from week 1 and week
2 onwards when reliability and resolution sharply drop. NCEP
and CMA forecasts exhibit qualitatively similar results (not
shown) but are overall less skillful than ECMWF. MME forecasts
are characterized slightly greater slopes for week 2 leads in
particular, indicating increased reliability and resolution for the
MME as compared to individual model forecasts. However,
the sharpness of the MME becomes very low at long lead
(Figures 2C,D); week 3 and week 4 MME forecasts show only
small deviation from equal odds, and those lack reliability.
Qualitatively similar findings are found for the WAM and AM
regions, where individual models (Figures 3A,B, 4A,B and MME
forecasts (Figures 3C,D, 4C,D) display good reliability but lower
sharpness at week 1 lead when compared to the NAM, especially
for the WAM. Skill decreases at higher leads with decreasing
sharpness, but greater slopes (i.e., closer to the 45◦ line) for
the MME indicate more reliability than for individual forecasts.
Week 3 forecasts are slightly more reliable than for the NAM and
almost flat lines for week 4 leads reflect low skill.
Maps of RPSS for individual models and the MME are shown
for the NAM in Figure 5. In week 1, Figure 5 displays positive
individual forecast skill depending on the model, with maximum
scores over land located over Central America and to the north
and northwest of the Gulf of Mexico; over neighboring oceanic
regions, maximum skill is found off the Central American coast
in the Pacific. In week 2, these regions are still characterized by
larger RPSS but with much lower magnitude, while RPSS values
for week 3 and week 4 are near zero or negative everywhere except
over southern Central America and off the coast in the Pacific for
ECMWF and NCEP forecasts. The CMA forecasts are less skillful
over all three monsoon regions. Multi-model combination results
in a slight RPSS increase in week 1 and 2 compared to the most
skillful individual model (ECMWF), particularly over Central
America, the southwest US and off the coast in the Pacific, while
from week 3 skill only remains over southern Central America.
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Vigaud et al. Subseasonal Predictability of Summer Monsoon Rainfall

FIGURE 1 | Extended Logistic Regressions plotted for ECMWF hindcasts issued Aug 3rd 2000 at [13.5◦ N;91.5◦ W] and fitted using 3-week windows over 11 years
for terciles definition and training. Forecasted probabilities of non-exceedance of the 0.33 (thick lines) and 0.67 (thin lines) quantiles respectively computed from
Equation (1) for different values of the ensemble mean weekly accumulated precipitation forecasts (x axis, in mm) are shown by parallel lines at different leads (week
1–4) yielding to logically consistent sets of forecasts. The distribution of ECMWF ensemble mean weekly rainfall over the 1999–2010 period at this gridpoint is plotted
as bins centered on integer multiple of 10 in the lower panel for the respective leads.

The greatest benefit of the MME is that it largely removes the
small negative RPSS values.
Over West Africa, RPSS in week 1 and 2 is much lower than
for the NAM with small positive values along the Guinean and
Atlantic coastal regions south of 18◦ N in latitudes (Figure 6).
These poor scores could be related to the low predictability
of Mesoscale Convective Systems (MCS) generally leading to
heavy precipitation events over the region but which are not well
predicted in current EPS (Swinbank et al., 2016). RPSS values for
week 3 and week 4 are near zero or negative everywhere except
for small patches near the coasts in NCEP and ECMWF models.
The MME again enhances skill compared to the best individual
model and largely eliminates the small negative RPSS values.
For the AM, RPSS values are maximum in week 1 and
2 extending from the south of Pakistan across India, except
along the west coast, and southern China toward northern
regions of Southeast Asia (Figure 7) for ECMWF and NCEP,
while reasonable skill is shown for surrounding oceanic regions.
From week 3, only ECMWF still exhibits skill over the central
Indian peninsula, Bangladesh and southern China, recalling the
monsoon precipitation footprint. As a result, MME forecasts are
more skillful compared to individual models up to week 2, with
maximum skill extending along a meridional band stretching
from northeastern India to southern China, but from week 3,
the skill of the MME is lower than for ECMWF thus making
questionable the value of a MME based on these three EPS for this
region. Note that the latter includes South and Southeast Asia but
not East Asian summer monsoon regions (Ding and Chan, 2005;
Huang et al., 2012).
3.2. Week 3–4 Averages
Figure 8 shows reliability diagrams computed over the three
monsoon regions for the below- and above-normal categories
for 2-week week 3–4 averages, from the individual models and

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Vigaud et al. Subseasonal Predictability of Summer Monsoon Rainfall

FIGURE 2 | Reliability diagrams for the below- and above- normal categories from ECMWF forecasts (A,B) and the MME of ECMWF, NCEP, and CMA forecasts (C,D)
for starts in May-Aug computed for landpoints of the North American summer monsoon region shown in Figure 5, with color coding based on week leads. The
frequencies with which each category is forecasted are indicated as bins centered on integer multiple of 0.10 in histograms plotted under the respective tercile
category diagram. The bins are projected along the same x-axis (forecast probabilities from 0 to 1) and scaled from 0 to 100%. Note that only bins with more than 1%
of the total number of forecasts in each category are plotted in the relative diagrams for each lead.

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Vigaud et al. Subseasonal Predictability of Summer Monsoon Rainfall

FIGURE 3 | Similar to Figure 2 but for landpoints of the West African monsoon region shown in Figure 6.

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Vigaud et al. Subseasonal Predictability of Summer Monsoon Rainfall

FIGURE 4 | Similar to Figure 2 but for landpoints of the Asian monsoon region shown in Figure 7.

their resulting MME with starts during the May-Aug season. indicating some improvements in terms of reliability. The gain
Week 3–4 averages are characterized by lower slopes than week from multi-model ensembling is increased (greater slopes) for
3 forecasts but greater than those for week 4 lead (Figures 2–4), week 3–4 compared to weekly averages. Figures 9A–D display

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Vigaud et al.
FIGURE 5 | Ranked Probability Skill Scores (RPSS) for ECMWF, NCEP, and CMA terciles precipitation forecasts as well as their MME for starts during the May-Aug
season. The different columns correspond to different leads from 1 to 4 weeks.
the percentage of forecast probabilities that do not fall in
the climatology bin 0.3–0.4, as a complementary measure of
sharpness. For both ECMWF and the MME, the percentage of
forecasts with probabilities different from climatology, and thus
sharpness, is increased for week 3–4 averages compared to week 3
and week 4 forecasts over all three regions, with greater increases
for ECMWF than for the MME.
RPSS averaged for all starts over each monsoon region
separately are shown in Figures 9E,F for week 3, week 4 and
week 3–4 forecasts from ECMWF and the MME respectively.
For both ECMWF and the MME, higher RPSS values are
found for week 3–4 averages compared to week 3 and week 4
forecasts. Moreover, the average week 3–4 RPSS is greater for
the MME than for ECMWF over the NAM and WAM but not
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Subseasonal Predictability of Summer Monsoon Rainfall
for the AM. In agreement with these findings, maps of RPSS
for week 3–4 MME outlooks shown in Figure 10 for all starts
within the May-Aug season confirm that week 3–4 averages
are more skillful than weekly forecasts at week 3 lead over
each region, an aspect which is less pronounced for the AM
(Figures 5–7, bottom panels). This is indicated by higher scores,
as for the NAM over southern Central America (Figure 10A),
illustrating the added value of pooling together week 3 and 4
leads. In addition, week 3–4 averages exhibit broader areas of
skill increase over West Africa compared to week 3, where not
only coastal regions of the tropical Atlantic and Guinea Gulf are
characterized by higher scores but also the Sahel south of 20◦ N
stretching across the whole subcontinent as far as the Ethiopian
highlands exhibiting maximum skill (Figure 10B). Skill is also
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Vigaud et al.
FIGURE 6 | Similar to Figure 5 but for the West African monsoon region.
increased for continental AM regions but to a lesser extend as
reflected by lower slopes in the reliability diagrams (Figure 8)
compared to the two other monsoon sectors. Week 3–4 averages
display maximum scores extending from northeastern parts of
the domain across the Indian peninsula to southern China
and Burma (Figure 10C), where no skill was found in weekly
forecasts. For the three monsoon domains, higher skill is found
for regions adjacent to the ocean that are generally drier than the
core monsoon suggesting that the ocean plays a role in regional
predictability.
3.3. Modulation of Skill by ENSO and the
MJO
To examine the skill from week 3–4 further, time-series for
the RPSS of week 3–4 MME forecasts averaged over each
monsoon region and the MJO RMM1 and RMM2 of Wheeler
and Hendon (2004) as well as the observed Niño3.4 index are
plotted in Figure 11, and their respective temporal correlations
are given in Table 2. For the NAM, periods when week 3–4
MME RPSS is reaching maximum values in Figure 11A coincide
with local minima in Niño3.4, an aspect which is emphasized
by significant anti-correlations (−0.23) in Table 2, while no
significant relationship is found with the MJO, except with
RMM2 during La Niña (−0.29). Over West Africa, mean RPSS
is negatively/positively correlated with Niño3.4/MJO RMM2
(−0.27/0.13), consistent with maximum RPSS values coinciding
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Subseasonal Predictability of Summer Monsoon Rainfall
with Niño3.4 minima but RMM2 peaks (Figure 11B). The best
MJO RMMs combination exhibits relationships of the same
magnitude as RMM2. For the AM, RPSS is negatively related
to Niño3.4 (−0.28) and MJO RMM1 (−0.19), with similar
magnitude to the best RMMs combination, agreeing with RPSS
peaks for Niño3.4/MJO RMM1 minima (Figure 11C).
Figure 12 shows week 3–4 MME RPSS averaged over land
gridpoints of the three monsoon regions for starts during distinct
ENSO conditions (neutral when the absolute value of Niño3.4
is smaller than 0.5, El Niño and La Niña for Niño3.4 greater
than 0.5 and lower than −0.5 respectively) and MJO phases
to get further insights on the stratification of skill according
to each signal. For all regions, contrasting mean RPSS values
suggest that skill is significantly enhanced for starts during La
Niña, while the asymmetry between ENSO phases suggests non-
linearities in skill relationships to ENSO; however, the small 11-
year 1999–2010 sample contains no strong El Niño events (see
Figure 11). The apparent non-linearity could be due to the more
pronounced circulation anomalies during La Niña than El Niño
for the NAM (Wang et al., 2007) but also El Niño relationships to
droughts for the WAM and AM (Krishna Kumar et al., 2006; Joly
and Voldoire, 2009) translating in less skill while predicting low
rainfall amounts compared to La Niña. Maximum RPSS is found
for all regions during MJO phase 7 (not significant for the WAM),
when convection is enhanced over the Western Pacific. For the
AM, maximum RPSS found also for phases 6, 8, 1, and 2 suggest
10 October 2017 | Volume 5 | Article 67
Vigaud et al.
FIGURE 7 | Similar to Figure 5 but for the Asian monsoon region.
better skill for monsoon break events occuring predominantly
during these MJO phases (Pai et al., 2011), compared to active
episodes most frequent during phase 4 for which mean RPSS
is minimum. For the NAM and WAM, lowest RPSS are found
during MJO phase 3 when convection is enhanced over the
Indian Ocean. During MJO phase 7, RMM1 and RMM2 are
respectively negative and positive, while it is the opposite for
phases 3 and 4, thus these results are consistent with mean
RPSS anti-correlations with RMM1 for the AM and positive
correlations with RMM2 for the WAM shown in Table 2.
Next, a Principal Components Analysis (PCA) is applied to
week 3–4 MME RPSS (total values; the mean is not removed)
over land points of each monsoon domain at weekly resolution.
This approach allows one to examine if the regional structure
of skill can be decomposed in geographically coherent patterns
of variability, as illustrated in Figure 13, top panels showing
the spatial correlations typical of the first Principal Components
(PCs) for each region. Despite the rather small part of total
variance explained (10, 7, and 6% for the NAM, WAM and AM),
RPSS PC1s are significantly and negatively correlated to RPSS
spatially averaged over land points for each monsoon domain
(around −0.9 for the WAM and AM, and above −0.5 for the
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Subseasonal Predictability of Summer Monsoon Rainfall
NAM), indicating that PC1 represents the spatially coherent
component of RPSS variability in each region. The patterns
associated with the first PCs bear some similarities to those of
correlations between weekly GPCP rainfall and both observed
Niño3.4 and MJO indices (Figure 13, lower panels). Scores
obtained for Niño3.4 are generally not significant which might
reflect the small sample of events across the short period of study.
For the NAM, maximum PC1 loadings over Central America
coincide with the pattern of highest negative correlations between
weekly rainfall and MJO RMMs, however loadings over land are
weaker than for the WAM and AM, agreeing with quantitatively
weaker relationships between mean RPSS and MJO indices
(Table 2). For the WAM, parts of PC1 loadings are consistent
with maximum correlations between rainfall and RMM1 (also
Niño3.4 to a lesser extent) along southern coastal regions of the
Guinea Gulf/tropical Atlantic and over the Ethiopian highlands
to the east. Over Sahelian regions west of 20◦ E, PC1 displays more
scattered loadings but recall significant correlations between
weekly precipitation and RMM2 which have also low spatial
coherence and are consistent with significant and positive mean
RPSS correlations with RMM2 (Table 2). Both patterns might
reflect the poor observations available locally that could translate
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Vigaud et al. Subseasonal Predictability of Summer Monsoon Rainfall

FIGURE 8 | Week 3–4 reliability diagrams for the below- (top) and above-normal (bottom) categories from ECWMF (black), NCEP (red), and CMA (green) forecasts
with starts in May–Aug together with their MME (blue) computed for landpoints of the North American (left), West African (center) and Asian (right) summer monsoon
regions. The frequencies with which each category is forecasted are indicated as bins centered on integer multiple of 0.10 in histograms plotted under the respective
tercile category diagram for each forecast in their respective colors. The bins are projected along the same x-axis (forecast probabilities from 0 to 1) and scaled from 0
to 100%. Note that only bins with more than 1% of the total number of forecasts in each category are plotted.

in some uncertainties in GPCP estimates, and thus in their
relationships to ENSO and MJO and skill measures of week
3–4 averages. For the AM, PC1 loadings also bear similarities
to correlation patterns between weekly rainfall and both MJO
RMMs: PC1 scores are maximum from the Indian peninsula to
northern regions of Southeast Asia and resemble the monsoon
footprint partly embedded in rainfall correlations with RMM2
contrasting with skill in the northeast and south Indian peninsula
similar to rainfall correlations with RMM1 and consistent with
RPSS anti-correlations with RMM1 (Table 2).
RPSS PC1s all exhibit significant correlations with the
observed Niño3.4 index (0.4, 0.24, and 0.2 for the NAM, WAM,
and AM respectively) agreeing with mean RPSS anti-correlations
with Niño3.4 (Table 2) and higher values for La Niña starts over
all monsoon regions (Figure 12A). Significant PC1 correlations
with the observed MJO for the AM (0.15 and -0.20 for RMM1
and RMM2) and WAM (-0.15 for RMM2) but none for the NAM.
These results agree with those of mean RPSS shown in Table 2
and indicate relationships to skill as shown in Figure 13, top
panels, consistently with the decreasing strength of MJO-induced

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Vigaud et al. Subseasonal Predictability of Summer Monsoon Rainfall

FIGURE 9 | Percentages of forecasts in all bins except for the 4th bin (0.33) shown in Figures 2–4 for week 3, week 4, and week 3–4 forecasts from ECMWF (A,C)
and the MME of ECMWF, NCEP, and CMA forecasts (B,D) for the Above and Below normal categories, together with related RPSS spatially averaged over each
monsoon region (E,F).

FIGURE 10 | Ranked Probability Skill Scores (RPSS) for terciles precipitation week 3–4 forecasts from the MME of ECMWF, NCEP, and CMA forecasts for all starts
within the May-Aug season.

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Vigaud et al. Subseasonal Predictability of Summer Monsoon Rainfall

FIGURE 11 | MME Week 3–4 RPSS averaged over the North American (A), West African (B), and Asian (C) continental monsoon regions (bars) together with
observed Niño3.4 index (cyan) and MJO measured by the RMM1 (green) and RMM2 (red) indices of Wheeler and Hendon (2004). Corresponding correlations can be
found in Table 2.

modulations of monsoonal rainfall from Asia (Krishnamurthy (Higgins and Shi, 2001; Lorenz and Hartmann, 2006). PC1
and Kinter, 2003) to West Africa (Niang et al., 2016) and North relationships to RMM2 and the similar magnitude of PC1
America, where MJO influence is most limited geographically correlations with Niño3.4 and the best MJO RMMs combination

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Vigaud et al. Subseasonal Predictability of Summer Monsoon Rainfall

for the AM might reflect the complexity of scale interactions and rainy events in the observed precipitation PDFs, forecasts
between ENSO and MJO activity (Figure 12). Regressing out one are only made for weeks where and when the lower tercile is
signal from the other lowers the relationships with PC1s which non-zero. The resulting calibrated weekly precipitation terciles
all remain significant (not shown). forecasts are characterized by good reliability but low sharpness
and, as expected, decreasing skill with lead times. Skill sharply
drops after one and two weeks (Figures 2–4), and remains low
4. CONCLUSIONS for greater leads over all three regions as well as for their MME
The skill from S2S forecasts using ECMWF, NCEP, and CMA (Figures 5–7). For the AM, only ECMWF shows positive skill
week 1–4 leads to form a MME by equal pooling has been from week 3, the MME consequently exhibits lower skill thus
examined by applying ELR to produce forecasted precipitation questioning the value of a weekly MME based on these three EPS
terciles probabilities at weekly resolution for the North American locally.
(NAM), West African (WAM) and Asian (AM) summer To improve skill and because it is sensible to increase
monsoon regions, over the 1999–2010 period for which all three averaging windows with increasing lead (Zhu et al., 2014), week
EPS reforecasts are available. Terciles are computed using, for 3 and week 4 leads are combined together to produce forecasts of
each start and lead, a 3-week window centered on the target week, week 3–4 precipitation tercile probabilities. The tercile definition
then the ELR model is trained out-of-sample using the same pool has been adapted using 6-week windows centered on the 2-
of weeks. To accomodate the discontinuity between zero rain week target formed by week 3 and 4 leads. The ELR model
is subsequently trained on the same pool of weeks defined
separately for each start in an out-of-sample manner. The
sharpness of the forecasts obtained is still low but increased
TABLE 2 | Correlations between May–Aug week 3–4 MME RPSS averaged over compared to both week 3 and 4 leads (Figures 9A–D), alongside
continental monsoon regions and observed NINO3.4 index (2nd column), MJO better reliability than week 4 forecasts and more gain for
measured by the RMM1 (3rd column) and RMM2 (4th column) indices of Wheeler the MME compared to individual models (Figure 8). When
and Hendon (2004) and their best linar combination (5th column).
compared to RPSS from weekly forecasts, week 3–4 outlooks
Mean RPSS NINO3.4 RMM1 RMM2 MJO have more skill than week 3 and week 4 averages over the three
monsoon regions (Figures 9E,F, 10). Regions adjacent to the
North America −0.23* −0.05 (0.03) 0.08 (−0.29*) 0.09 (0.24*) ocean display higher skill suggesting a possible role for the ocean
West Africa −0.27* −0.04 (0.06) 0.13* (−0.01) 0.13* (−0.06) with regards to regional predictability. Recently, Bombardi et al.
Asia −0.28* −0.19* (−0.17) 0.09 (−0.04) 0.21* (0.17) (2017) found that subseasonal forecasts generally outperform
climatology when predicting the onset date of the monsoon, and
Scores in brackets correspond to correlations for starts during La Niña exclusively, and
those significant at 95% level of significance using Monte Carlo simulations are indicated for the AM, Moron et al. (2017) found a drop in the spatial
with a star. coherence of interannual variations of subseasonal to seasonal

FIGURE 12 | Mean MME Week 3–4 RPSS averaged over continental monsoon regions for observed phases of Niño3.4 index (A) and MJO phases (B) measured by
the RMM1 and RMM2 indices of Wheeler and Hendon (2004). Black, gray, and light gray lines correspond to the 90% level of significance over the respective North
American, West African and Asian summer monsoon regions using Monte Carlo simulations.

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Vigaud et al. Subseasonal Predictability of Summer Monsoon Rainfall

FIGURE 13 | Top panels display spatial correlation patterns of raw week 3–4 MME RPSS Principal Components (PCs) for starts during the May-Aug season. Other
panels show May–Aug correlations between GPCP weekly precipitation and observed weekly Niño3.4 index (2nd raw) and MJO RMM1 (3rd raw) and RMM2 (bottom
raw) indices of Wheeler and Hendon (2004). Only scores significant at 95% level of significance using Monte Carlo simulations are plotted.

anomalies in the core of the monsoon season in comparison
to onset and withdrawal phases, hence suggesting that the skill
of the subseasonal outlooks hereby discussed might be higher
for forecast starts in spring and early summer than for starts
within the core monsoon season. The timing and strength of
the developing monsoonal circulation that advects moisture into
continental core monsoon regions is generally influenced by
neighboring SSTs and other external factors, while the role of
the land surface is relatively passive then due to its dryness.
In contrast, local land surface feedbacks can sustain rainfall
during the core monsoon season through local-scale moisture
“recycling” as has been observed for the AM region (Meehl, 1994;
Koster et al., 2004). These differing mechanisms are expected
to yield more predictability during the onset phase compared
to the core season for continental summer monsoon regions
at subseasonal and seasonal time-scales (Moron et al., 2017).
Skill and predictability of onset date is not explicitly examined
here.

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Vigaud et al.
Next, skill relationships to ENSO and the MJO are examined
by averaging RPSS over land gridpoints of each monsoon sector
domain (Table 2 and Figures 11, 12), and by applying a PCA
to week 3–4 MME RPSS for each region separately (Figure 13,
top panels). RPSS PC1s are all significantly correlated with
mean RPSS over each monsoon continental domain, and both
are related to ENSO. For all monsoon regions, skill is greater
for starts during La Niña compared to El Niño and neutral
conditions (Figure 12A). The asymmetry between both phases
could be due to the small sample of ENSO episodes during the
11-year period (see Figure 11) but could also be related to more
pronounced circulation anomalies during La Niña than El Niño
for the NAM (Wang et al., 2007) and El Niño relationships to
droughts for the WAM and AM (Krishna Kumar et al., 2006;
Joly and Voldoire, 2009). These non-linearities could explain
the rather low linear correlations in Table 2 at least for the
NAM, where scores are increased significantly during La Niña.
Moreover, enhanced skill for starts during cold ENSO phases
might be related to increased predictability of monsoon onset
dates. Over the AM region for instance, the onset is hastened
during La Niña episodes, while the pattern of latent heat release
that drives the monsoon flow (Slingo and Annamalai, 2000)
is noisier during the core season, when the monsoon is then
less sensitive to, and thus less predictible from, large-scale SST
forcings (Moron and Robertson, 2014; Moron et al., 2017).
Across all monsoon domains, RPSS is maximum during
MJO phase 7 (Figure 12B) when latent heating anomalies in
the warm pool remotely increase convection over the WAM
and NAM through an equatorial wave mechanism (Matthews,
2004; Lavender and Matthews, 2009) that could lead to more
skillful predictions over both regions. For the AM, additional
maximum RPSS during phases 6, 8, 1, and 2 indicate bettter skill
for monsoon breaks compared to active episodes most frequent
during phase 4 and for which skill is minimum, in agreement
with greater spatial coherence and predictability than for the core
of the monsoon season (Moron et al., 2017). For the NAM and
WAM, skill is minimum during MJO phase 3 when convection is
enhanced over the Indian Ocean, in turn increasing the activity
of AEWs within the WAM and tropical Atlantic TCs (Zhang,
2013; Klotzbach and Oliver, 2015) linked to Gulf moisture surges
feeding in the NAM (Pascale and Bordoni, 2016), which synoptic
nature might be less predictible. Contrasting skill relationships
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AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONS
NV designed and ran the ELR calibration approach used in
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
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Conflict of Interest Statement: The authors declare that the research was
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